Memeorandum

August 31, 2003

From the very interesting NY Times piece about the author of "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?":

...his conclusion is anything but fictional: that Pakistan's military secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence, widely known as I.S.I., is deeply involved with both the Islamic fundamentalist groups responsible for Mr. Pearl's death and with Al Qaeda.

From TIME magazine, about the interrogation by the US of captured Al Qaeda biggie Zubaydah:

Zubaydah, writes Posner, said the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin Laden "personally" told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him with secret funds as long as al-Qaeda refrained from promoting jihad in the kingdom. The Pakistani contact, high-ranking air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the equation, Zubaydah said, at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan also attended by Zubaydah. Bin Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (isi), to get protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was "blessed by the Saudis."

Now it appears that Iran's rapid progress toward a nuclear weapons capacity came thanks to substantial assistance from Pakistan. Add that to the fact that we now know that North Korea's progress along the uranium-enrichment track (as opposed to plutonium) was similarly the product of key assistance from Pakistan. If we're looking for the unstable Islamist-leaning state which has nuclear weapons and is the chief proliferator of nuclear technology to other unstable rogue regimes, we've found it: Pakistan. The urgent question to be answered is whether such assistance is continuing. If it's ended, when did it end?

As a very minor point - the NY Times reported that we are trying to add non-US troops into Iraq, particularly Muslim troops:

The top American commander for Iraq [Gen. John P. Abizaid] said today there was no need for more American troops there, but he encouraged Muslim allies like Turkey and Pakistan to send peacekeepers and said accelerating the training of a new Iraqi army should be considered.

OK, Turkey once occupied Iraq as part of the Ottoman Empire. Whether their troops would be welcome in a return engagement I leave to the bright lights and sensitive souls at the Pentagon and the State Dept.

Pakistan had troops in Somalia as part of Black Hawk Down, and apparently has been involved in 25 UN peacekeeping missions. But given the grim connections noted above, could someone explain to me, slowly, as if I were a complete idiot, why we want Pakistani troops in Iraq?

MORE: OK, let's add a "Disingenuity Alert". The author is noting, and debunking, the widespread notion that a "Jewish cabal" dominates US foreign policy. I agree with his conclusion, but find this unconvincing:

There are several myths to be considered. The first is the idea that the American or the British government is dominated or manipulated by Jews. In fact, none of President Bush's cabinet members are Jewish, and the last time individual Jews played a prominent part in any British government was under John Major.

OK, if reaching all the way back to John Major is allowed, maybe he should mention that under Bill Clinton, we had Robert Rubin at Treasury, Madeleine Albright at State, and William Cohen at Defense. I include Mr. Cohen because I suspect that fans of Jewish conspiracies will look at his name and suspect (correctly, it turns out) that he has Jewish roots.

STILL MORE: A serious, and seriously vexed, response. The Judd Bro fits this into a Grand Unified Theory, and informs us that Jewish men are like, well, women.

...U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have launched a major effort to determine if they were victims of bogus Iraqi defectors who planted disinformation to mislead the West before the war.

...Hussein's motives for such a deliberate disinformation scheme may have been to bluff his enemies abroad, from Washington to Tehran, by sending false signals of his military might. Experts also say the dictator's defiance of the West, and its fear of his purported weapons of mass destruction, boosted his prestige at home and was a critical part of his power base in the Arab world.

Hussein also may have gambled that the failure of United Nations weapons inspectors to find specific evidence identified by bogus defectors ultimately would force the Security Council to lift sanctions imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. U.S. officials now believe Hussein hoped to then covertly reconstitute his weapons programs.

Well, the scheme was evidently not as carefully calibrated as Saddam might have hoped, since we invaded anyway. So, was Saddam just crazy? Who knows? My candidate for "crazy like a fox" is Jeff Hauser, who aired the "he was bluffing" theory back in early June. Yesterday's wild leap is today's CW.

MORE: I have never before heard of the Power and Interest News Report, but this is on topic.

So, with "Clark for President" as an excuse, I will now channel the conventional wisdom on the various candidates.

First, this idea that the Democrats need more candidates is silly - several of the current crop have admirable resumes, and appear to be perfectly Presidential. What is really happening is that the Democrats are trying to conjure up a candidate who can appeal to their base and sneak past the rest of us. A track record is a burden for this exercise; hence, the current muttering for new faces.

As to the individual candidates, Sharpton, Moseley-Braun, and Kuchinich will not be affected by a Clark candidacy, because their campaigns are not reality-oriented.

Graham has apparently said he will be the Presidential nominee, or retire. I believe he will not run as a "ticket-balancer" - better to reign as an elderly Senator than serve as an elderly VP. Therefore, Clark's entry will not affect his already-neglible chances.

Edwards is running for the VP slot this year, as an escape route from a 2004 Senate race he might well lose. Clark would be a more compelling VP pick than Edwards, who is almost as politically inexperienced as Clark, and has a less impressive background. We assume here that Clark, as a military type, will have Southern appeal. Edwards' strategy must now be to oppose tort reform, and prepare to re-enter the practice of law in 2005.

Gephardt is a fellow I have never had a feel for. I think he has no hope of gaining the nomination, and no appeal as a VP pick. Clark's entry doesn't help him, so it must hurt.

Lieberman at this point believes his mission is to preserve the credibility of his party on the subject of national security. Clark's entry would help Lieberman on this score. As to getting himself nominated, Lieberman may be entertaining the fantasy that, if we find WMDs and Saddam, his positions will merit a second look. We will, they won't.

Kerry has already begun his death spiral. The rest of us will be thankful if a Clark candidacy means that Kerry does not mention his Viet Nam service every three minutes, but one wonders what else Big John might offer. Self-financing of his campaign is out; eighteen years of distinguished public service, during which he annoyed us with his arrogance and issue-straddling, will count for little.

Dean will not lose one of his current supporters to Clark. However, Dean needs to pick up support amongst the Democrats who need a fresh face with whom to fall in love, and have so far resisted his charms. Clark will hurt here. Also, the fickle media will have a back-to-school crush on Clark, dumping Dean like an old newspaper. Still, on balance, a Clark candidacy hurts Kerry much more than it hurts Dean, so we score this as a plus for the eventual Democratic nominee.

Wild cards? Al Gore stepped aside last year, thinking primarily of his own situation. Now, he will listen to folks tell him that the party is on the brink of disaster, and only he can unite it, deliver the message, defeat Bush, and end the madness. It is not about Al anymore, this one's for all humanity! Gore in the balance! Groan. He may fall for this rubbish, put personal considerations aside, and give Dean even more stature when Dean steamrollers him.

Folks who remember McCarthy v. Kennedy will know what sort of resentment I am picturing if Big Al joins the hunt. Al ran a screwed up campaign in 2000, he has been damn near AWOL in opposing the war, and if he thinks he can waltz in at this late date to pick a position and claim the prize.... well, that is what Dean's folks will be thinking. And saying.

And Hillary? Hillary! versus Dean would be the brawl to settle it all, and we would pay extra to see it. Although her current ploy is to sit this one out, we remain convinced that, unlike her hubby, she will not duck the draft.

Rumsfeld: My position is that we ought to have as many forces in the Middle East as is appropriate. And if we're going to make an error, we ought to have too many, rather than too few. And that is the position of the president. It's the position of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the vice chairman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff completely, all of them, and the combatant commander. John Abizaid's the combatant commander. He has indicated that he has the level of forces there, U.S. forces, that he believes is appropriate at the present time --

Q: (Off mike.)

Rumsfeld: -- for the tasks that he has.

He has also said that we need to increase the coalition forces. And we've been working to do that, and they're flowing in now, in larger numbers.

But most important, he and the Coalition Provisional Authority have been working very hard to increase the number of Iraqi forces. So the Iraqi forces in the police, the army, the militia, the border patrol have all been growing at very rapid clip. And I don't know the number at the moment -- it changes from time to time -- but the last time I looked, it was something in the neighborhood of 40 or 50 thousand Iraqis are now either trained or in training and on the job, armed, to contribute, to provide security in the country.

If you think about it, if you had a choice between foreign presence for security and Iraqi presence for security, with an Iraqi face on it, clearly the latter is preferable. It is, in the last analysis, the responsibility of the Iraqi people to take control of their country and to provide the kind of security and stabilities and an environment that's hospitable to economic recovery and political recovery.

The -- there are some recommending that more U.S. forces go in. I can tell you that if General Abizaid recommended it, it would happen in a minute. But he has not recommended it, and we are putting a full court press on trying to increase the number of Iraqis.

"In Iraq moreover we’re dealing not just with regime remnants but also with tens of thousands of criminals that were released from the jails by the regime before it fell, as well as terrorists and foreign fighters who have entered the country over the borders to try to oppose the Coalition. They pose a challenge to be sure but they also pose an opportunity because Coalition forces can deal with the terrorists now in Iraq instead of having to deal with those terrorists elsewhere, including the United States."

If Rumsfeld is describing a flexible adaptation to a difficult situation, fine. We are big supporters of "when life hands you lemons, make vodka-tonics". However, his remarks are a long way from saying it was the initial plan.

With that caveat, and however we got here, Rumsfeld is certainly suggesting that "flypaper" is sticking around.

August 28, 2003

De Broglie, as you recall, enunciated the view that matter could be characterized as both a particle and a wave. Apparently, wave-like behavior is most easily detectable amongst smaller particles, such as electrons, and leads to puzzling results - because the wave is (or at least, can be thought of as) a probability distribution, an electron can appear to be in two positions simultaneously, and has some (albeit small) probability of being anywhere.

Yes, these ruminations have taken us somewhat afield, and no, we are not prepping for a Star Trek convention. Rather, we are attempting to connect the physical sciences with the social sciences, and especially the dismal science.

The Man Without Particle Accelerator has recently discovered the astonishing shrinking HDP Krugman. With the help of Don Luskin and Matt Hoy, we also observe that the newer, smaller HDP K is able to appear nearly simultaneously in two very different positions on the matter of California's fiscal health.

We are fascinated. What other insights has physics to offer? Onward to the frontier!

Critics of the Bush Administration foreign policy effort may soon have to contend with the fact that, by luck or design, we may see multilateral (and, God bless us, successful) efforts in both North Korea and Iraq.

It will be all very well to assert that Bush and Compnay would never have staggered to the correct course without the goading of their critics, but that may prove to be a tough sell come the election.

Orrin Judd has argued repeatedly that all comedy is conservative. In this discussion, we learn that Hollywood drama is conservative as well.

Can I count on you to follow the link and find it (and to skip the rebuttal)? Here's the excerpt:

Harry Shearer: ...if you look at the--the vast majority of--of pictures that Hollywood likes to crank out, are intensely conservative in their world view. It's an individual, a sole individual who embodies, a--a--an eternal sense of right and wrong that's not relativistic in any sense, a raid against a very threatening world, and, you know, he'll cooperate to a limited degree, but in the full knowledge that most of those he'll cooperate with will either will betray him or be killed, and he'll be standing alone as the lone hero at the end of the film.

"More than likely, General Clark would wait until sometime after Sept. 15, a financial reporting date for presidential contenders. If he announces before then, he would have to reveal how much money he raised in the third quarter of the year, which pales beside the millions generated by Dr. Dean, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and other leading Democratic candidates."

"...the retired army general told The Des Moines Register on Tuesday that he would decide whether he will be a candidate by the time he speaks at the University of Iowa on Sept. 19."

We note that "deciding" and "announcing" are two different things. The General could certainly use this speech, and the media speculation it would attract, as an opportunity to announce a decison made previously.

Campaign strategists will agonize over whether to announce in Iowa, New Hampshire, or elsewhere. I could see the benefits of a Clark double-play; stage an announcement in New Hampshire, which the bored press will eagerly attend; then give the big fopo speech in Iowa, and get more press coverage.

There's my two cents - where's the change?

MORE: From the Times, we see that the subject of the speech is "The American Leadership Role in a Changing World." Historians will have to suggest a time in the last century when such a subject might have been inappropriate.

Howard Dean has found the magic, so we will try a bit of a Harry Potter thing today. First, a big sloppy kiss on the front page of the Times - he's the front runner, he's energetic, he gets rock-star crowds - Go, Howard!

The Times also mentions this Zogby poll, which is a bit of a breath-taker:

Zogby International, an independent firm, is scheduled to release Wednesday a poll showing Dr. Dean leading in New Hampshire with 38 percent of the vote to 17 percent for Senator John Kerry; in early July Senator Kerry had 25 percent to Dr. Dean's 22 percent. The poll has a margin of sampling error of 4.5 percentage points.

Smokin'!

OK, the bad news:

...the presidential-style trip could increase the risk of Dr. Dean peaking too early — and revealed other potential pitfalls. Holding oceans of blue Dean placards at every stop were nearly all white hands, a homogeneity the campaign tried to counter with a rainbow of supporters on stage, which only drew more attention to the lack of diversity in the audience. The feisty crowds were filled with Birkenstock liberals whose loudest ovations always followed Dr. Dean's antiwar riff — there were few union members, African-Americans, or immigrants.

And, since we love his wordplay, we will pitch in some commentray by Al Sharptongue:

"No one has even asked about the fact that [Dean's] surge of support has been really one-dimensional," Mr. Sharpton said.

In addition, Mr. Sharpton said he is often asked about how he can hope to lure white voters in key early states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, while Mr. Dean is never pressed on how he will appeal to minorities.

"When I come to Iowa, they ask 'How can Sharpton get the white vote?' " the minister said. "I've run [for governor] in New York and gotten more white votes in my races than he's gotten black votes in Vermont. Why aren't we talking about that?"

The Dean response is described, mercifully briefly, in the Times article:

...while the people introducing him included Hispanic teachers and black preachers, the people buying the "Doctor is in" buttons were mostly aging flower children and the tongue-studded next generation.

"We're working really hard to change that," Dr. Dean said. At the union convention yesterday in Chicago — where the undecided audience offered mainly polite claps for the zingers that had delighted the devoted — he tried one of his newer lines: "When white people and brown people and black people vote together, that's when we make social progress in this country."

Oh, hold the front page, that line ranks up with "I have a dream". Just extend the list to include "and women, and union folks, and gays, and lesbians..." and you have a Saturday Night Live skit right there. [Jane Galt has more.]

Now, the sports metaphor of choice in this story is the marathon. However, I suggest folks think of a prize-fight - it can go twelve rounds, or it can end in ninety seconds. Dean is going to put some of his opponents out of their (and our) misery very soon.

Last tidbit - the reporter for this story is Jodi Wilgoren. Who? I don't know either, but if she is the Girl on the Bus with the Dean campaign, her reporting may suffer from a bit of the Helsinki syndrome.

Via Mark Kleiman, we learn that an enterprising blogger went to Congressman Inslee's Iraq-war presentation that included, as a panelist, Ambassador Wilson.

Although it has been totally ignored by the press, apparently the video includes these comments by the Ambassador on the prospects of a criminal investigation (stolen from Mr. Kleiman):

"I have confidence at the professional level that whatever they think is doable will be done." He acknowledged some uncertainty about whether public discussion might inhibit the investigation rather than forwarding it.

Then he opened up:

At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words.

Now, he had alluded to a suspicion about White House political operatives back on August 10, as reported in the must-read St. Petersburg Times:

He said he believes that political operatives in the White House gave his wife's name to Novak, and he thinks he knows who they are. But he's "not ready, yet" to name them. He hopes an investigation - by the FBI, Congress or both - will take care of that.

Mr. Kleiman, ever the optimist, says this:

Now that Rove has been accused, it's for him to respond. It's a simple yes or no: Did he talk to Novak about Plame, or instruct anyone else to do so? I hope that some credentially journalists will be asking him that question.

Well, in my role as permanently damp blanket, I will point out that Karl Rove is unlikely to respond to a charge that the entire press community has ignored. Look at the Seattle PI - they had a breathless eidtorial about Wilson on Aug. 10, ran an AP story before the event which noted the Plame controversy, and then ran a follow-up AP story (different reporter) on the Inslee meeting, which ignored the Rove quote. Who dropped the ball? One wonders how many other suggestions of Bush aides led away in handcuffs were made - even my nose for news might have twitched at that.

Frankly, it is a puzzle that this was overlooked. But knowing our Ambassador, I expect he will try again. He is meant to be on Nightline on Tuesday night.

And I may try again too. E-mail the Seattle PI editors at: editpage@seattlepi.com

For our man in St. Petersburg, David Ballingrud, who ought to be interested in this follow-up: national@sptimes.com

Prof. Todd Gitlin's characterization of Kathy Boudin's case as representative of a "cultural conflict" appears to rationalize and dignify the elitist arrogance of the Weather Underground movement in the late 1960's into the 1980's.

I, like Mr. Gitlin, participated in the antiwar movement. I was a regional organizer for the Students for a Democratic Society.

The S.D.S. movement was kidnapped by deluded, self-important people like Ms. Boudin, who lived out a revolutionary fantasy that was spawned while she lived a life of upper-middle-class privilege.

The deaths of the police officers and the suffering of their families were tragic. The actions of Ms. Boudin were criminal and socially irrelevant.
FRANK MIATA
Brooklyn, Aug. 22, 2003

And my theory about the second letter is that the Times couldn't dredge up anyone to provide this quote on the record, so they printed this instead:

Kathy Boudin participated in the murder of three persons. Her motive, according to her testimony before the parole board reported in your article, was a desire to play Robin Hood, stealing from whites to give to blacks, because of guilt over the white color of her skin.

The commissioners who granted her parole and who are black "did not explain their reasoning." Their sympathy with her state of mind, although understandable, is deplorable.
BARRY FREEDMAN
Los Angeles, Aug. 24, 2003

The key paragraphs that prompted that observation would seem to be:

...Ms. Boudin, who is white, was a passenger in a rented getaway van the police stopped. One guard was killed during the robbery at the mall, and two police officers died in a shootout with the robbers, who leaped from the back of the van.

...The commissioners who granted her parole, Daizzee D. Bouey and Vernon C. Manley, did not explain their reasoning, but in questioning Ms. Boudin, they seemed to express understanding about what she described as her confused state of mind at the time of the crime, her deep feelings of guilt for being white, and her deep desire to prove that she was committed to helping blacks.

The commissioners, who are black, sometimes finished her sentences or tried to sum up her testimony, according to the transcript. At one point, as she described the kinship she had felt with Civil War abolitionists, Commissioner Bouey interrupted, "You should write a book, or write something."

August 26, 2003

The good doctor violated the Hippocratic Oath, rasing blood pressure and causing heart attacks with this:

...in the Afghanistan war, ...skeptics questioned the wisdom of attacking so soon after 9/11, and called for more boots on the ground when the initial bombing campaign seemed to produce meager results.

Lately I've seen a lot of people implying that after 9/11 there was substantial opposition to the campaign in Afghanistan.

... there were of course some who questioned the wisdom of winning the hearts and minds of people in Afghanistan by bombing the shit out of them, but on what planet was there "considerable public criticism?"

First, as to the matter of George Bush standing tall and staying the course, here are three ABC News polls from Oct., Nov., and Dec of 2001. This is the era of the 90% approval rating, so the poll evidence of serious public skepticsm is not conclusive (well, it is, but I am in denial).

So ignore the polls! I vividly remember the "Afghanistan quagmire" story by Johnny Apple on the front page of the NY Times from Nov 2001. (Ooops, it was a Happy Halloween story). And now I am having too much fun - here is timely, yet timeless wisdom from Ms. Dowd!

I recall, as I presume Dr. D does, that there was a stretch in early November where people questioned whether the bombing could be effective (more troops!), whether we could bomb during Ramadan (Nov 16 to Dec 16), and whether we would be bogged down until spring. However, the dam burst, so for flavor, here is a John Leo "quagmire backlash" piece from Nov. 19.

Comparable pundit angst resurfaced during the second week of the war in Iraq, when we clearly had too few troops, our supply lines were hopelessly over-extended, Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker was reaching for a towel suitable for throwing in, and Josh Marshall was publishing a letter wondering if his readers could spell "Dunkirk".

Last April, as in Nov. 2001, polls did not capture the fickle mood of the commentariat. Only the experts were smart enough to panic - fortunately, Bush, Rumsfeld, and the rest of us were stupid. And still are!

However, in a bit of a change of direction, please join me in gawking for a moment at the Dec 20 poll - where the heck was the Christmas spirit?

I excerpt:

Dec. 20 — Despite the collapse of Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, most Americans believe the toughest work in the war on terrorism is yet to come. And most set a high standard for success: They want not only Osama bin Laden's capture, but the toppling of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

...it doesn't end there — 61 percent also say the war won't be a success unless the United States ousts Saddam, long a bugaboo in U.S. public opinion. More, 72 percent, support U.S. military action against Iraq to achieve that aim.

August 24, 2003

JUDGE NOT. Roy Moore is unfit to be a judge. That's the only conclusion we can draw from this New York Times article, in which Moore seems to believe that when civil laws -- and his oath to uphold them -- conflict with his religious beliefs, the latter should win. Tapped has no problem with people believing there's a higher law than human law. But if you're a judge, you need to enforce the latter. And if he can't do so in good conscience, as Moore says, he should resign immediately.

I pause here to emphasize the point that in my view the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted, constitutional laws and sabotaging death penalty cases. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply the laws and has been given no power to supplant them with rules of his own. Of course if he feels strongly enough he can go beyond mere resignation and lead a political campaign to abolish the death penalty—and if that fails, lead a revolution. But rewrite the laws he cannot do.

No single authority is in charge of the grid, and few have an incentive to invest the money needed to improve its reliability. Deregulation increased the vulnerability of the grid to failure, regulators and industry executives broadly concur.

Deregulation is actually a misnomer for the restructuring of the power industry, because only the generation of electricity was freed from strict government controls, beginning in 1992. Companies were allowed to charge market-based rates for generating electricity, creating the financial incentive to build more power plants.

But the transmission of electricity over high-voltage lines and the distribution into homes and buildings remained regulated. Power companies received only a relatively low, government-set return on their investment in the grid, so they allocated far less money to improving transmission reliability than to building power plants.

As a result, much more electricity is moving over virtually the same transmission wires, pushing them to carry loads they were not built to handle, according to many regulators and experts.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, seeking to increase the nation's combat power without hiring more troops, is poised to order a sweeping review of Pentagon policies, officials say. It will include everything from wartime mobilization and peacekeeping commitments, to reservist training and incentives for extended duty.

The story actually describes Rumsfeld as in charge, and making sense. For example:

Another approach is asking allies to help shoulder the burden. Officials say 3,000 Germans now stand guard at United States bases in Germany, replacing Americans sent to Iraq. Before Mr. Rumsfeld asked Germany to provide those patrols, thousands of reservists were almost mobilized for the mission.

Say it with me, Times readers - "D'uh!". Germans on guard in Germany - works for me. And, in the same story, we see kind words for privatization of some administrative services currently performmed by uniformed troops. Disorienting - don't they read Paul Krugman?

Now, I happen to think that the Times has sensibly realized that, in the long run, a larger military is not how they want to see our nations resources expended. Don't anyone tell TAPPED, though.

Our source of inspiration this morning is Dexter Filkins, featured on the front page of the NY Times with this very encouraging story from the rest of Iraq.

Do check the photo and caption, which was front and center on the Times - no one can complain that they are burying this one.

A few excerpts, but I am wasting your time - go read the whole thing.

DIWANIYA, Iraq, Aug. 19 — As the area around Baghdad endured a week of repeated violence, a happier scene unfolded in this city, a two-hour drive to the south.

American soldiers, without helmets or flak jackets, attended graduation ceremonies of the Diwaniya University Medical School. At ease with the Iraqi students and their parents, the American marines laughed, joked and posed in photographs. One by one, the students walked up to thank them, for Marine doctors had taught classes in surgery and gynecology and helped draw up the final exams.

We like the Americans very much here," said Zainab Khaledy, 22, who received her medical degree last Sunday. "We feel better than under the old regime. We have problems, like security, but everything is getting better."

Words from a Marine Colonel:

The marines are even able to go beyond immediate postwar needs and move toward strengthening the civil society. They are supervising construction of a women's shelter here, and they make regular deliveries to a local nursing home. They have even set up a Rotary Club.

"We are in lock-sync with the Iraqis," Colonel Malay said. "We want what they want."

It is worth remembering that our differences with "the Iraqis" (who are far from monolithic) are not irreconcilable. We want out, they want us out, and the sticking point seems to be, what kind of society and government will we leave behind. Not at all hopeless.

However, this chap has discouraging words for free-marketeers:

Hassan Naji, a records clerk at the Diwaniya children's hospital, is critical of recent changes but only up to a point. Like many at the hospital, he is convinced that newborns are dying needlessly because the hospital lacks the electricity to run its sterile ward for premature babies. Before the war, an emergency line kept the electricity flowing.

Mr. Naji could produce few records on the recent infant deaths, attributing the inability to the new freedom brought by the Americans.

"Democracy has ruined this hospital," he said, sifting through uncollated notes and jottings. "In the past, people really worked at their jobs, if only because they were terrified of their supervisors. We kept the most accurate records. We had weekly meetings on the worst cases.

"Now, with all this freedom, no one cares anymore," he said. "We don't keep records anymore."

However:

For all that, Mr. Naji said, he would not pine for the days of Saddam Hussein. "Never," he said. "The Americans did a great thing when they got rid of that tyrant. Things could even get worse here and I would still feel that way."

"Believe me," Mr. Naji added, "most of the people in Diwaniya would feel that way."

The story also glosses over some apparent OSHA and minimum wage violations. However, we are heartened.

Buried inside, the Times also reports on three British soldiers killed in Basra, and riots in the Kirkuk area.

Now, a bit of a puzzle: Donald Rumsfeld's war objectives, as of March 21, included (third of eight):

"to search for, capture, drive out terrorists who have found safe harbor in Iraq."

So, would flypaper devotees care to explain whether Rumsfeld was lying then? Or have our objectives quietly changed, and why have the American people not been told?

Or, have we been told? I haven't checked every transcript of every Sunday talk show.

IF the switcheroo has not been announced, I don't think "strategic deception" will be persuasive, BTW. I'm only guessing, but I doubt that a few words from Rumsfeld to Russert explaining that the Administration views this influx of terrorists as a golden opportunity would prompt the jihadist equivalent of "D'oh", followed by a rapid retreat by same.

Although if pacifying the country were that easy, it might be worth a try.

UPDATE: By "pacifying the country", I meant Iraq! Unrest struck other cities too, as this on-the scene report confirms.

...What I'm interested in is whether it's really true that there are cases of conservatives/Republicans who have been denied tenure solely because they are conservatives/Republicans.

Here is the case of Jim Miller of Smith College, denied tenure in part because of an article he wrote for NRO decrying political correctness on America's campuses. (More here, short reg. req'd.).

Well, there is an example for Kevin. Can we go home now?

Not so fast. Kevin linked to the pseudonymous John Lemon, who explained his need for a secret identity thusly:

With a secret identity, I can parade around in tights and a really cool cape while battling evildoers, especially lefty ones.

NO, he didn't say that; however, John Lemon is a "Scrappleface" fan, so I thought I would join the fun.

What he did say was:

I was once warned that no Republican would ever get tenure in this department -- I assume that can be generalized to all sorts of other unpleasantries.

Hence, Kevin's question.

Well, there may be two ideas running together here - do faculties discriminate against conservative academics, and do they discriminate against academics who are also conservative?

If a group of marxist economics honestly don't take seriously the work of a free-marketeer, well, that may not be discrimination - it may simply be disagreement. Or, if a group of deconstructionists in the English Department simply can't see the point of hiring some expert in dead white European authors, well, its their department, and if they want to run it into the ground, good for them. There is a technical term for that sort of behavior, which is "Duke". No, not John Wayne! The University. The Duke was not a deconstructionist! My goodness. Anyway, my buddy Emma takes this tack - it's not discrimination, conservatives are just wrong. Thanks for clearing that up!

So, fine, conservative academics may have a bit of a rum go, depending on the department. But John Lemon is complaining about discrimination against academics who are also conservative. By this I mean, the actual job performance, i.e., the teaching and publishing, does not have an unavoidable poltical tilt (I infer, or how is he publishing?). And the discrimination would be of the form, "love your paper, your students rave about you, but I saw a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker on your car, I heard you say you want us to drill in ANWR, good-bye".

If discrimination of this type is happening, that would be bad. OTOH, as some of Kevin's commenters helpfully explain, conservatives are basically greedy and annoying anyway (also stupid), so what's the problem?

The point is this - many of the same folks who are sure that there is no anti-conservative tilt in our universities routinely decry the vast right wing conspiracy ("VRWC"), in which think tanks play a major role.

When William Simon, U.S. treasury secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford, took over one of the four sisters, the John M. Olin Foundation, he was appalled at corporate giving patterns and took the lead in organizing corporate allies. Simon urged business to "cease the mindless subsidizing of colleges and universities whose departments of economy, government, politics, and history are hostile to capitalism" and to move funds from "the media which serve as megaphones for anti-capitalist opinion" to more "pro-freedom" and "pro-business" media. While there are no available statistics for corporate support of conservative media, the Alliance for Justice reports that corporation funding still provides the core of support for conservative public interest law firms.

Preception drives reality.

And we have a bit from the PFAW on how the conservative foundations attempt to level the academic playing field:

Olin fellowships are an academic haven for academics who support Reaganite economic and social policies. According to the Nation, the foundation's 1988 annual report shows that $55 million in grants were distributed, primarily to underwrite university programs "intended to strengthen the economic, political and cultural institutions upon which...private enterprise is based."

...One of Olin's chief program areas is "Law and Economics," an interest of the foundation for almost 30 years. Under this program, the foundation first established a seat at the University of Chicago in the 1960s for the purpose of teaching "free market economics" as it applies to law.[155] According to an Alliance for Justice report, the Chicago School emphasizes "'economic efficiency' and 'wealth maximization' as the conceptual cornerstones" for judicial opinions.

...Subsequently, the foundation has funded a number of conservative "Law and Economics" programs at a number of otherwise mainstream institutions of distinction, as well as conservative history, business, and political science programs.

Now, obviously any proper lefty deplores this. However, would this have been happening if conservatives felt that the normal channels of advancement were open at our nation's universities? According to TAP, this took off in the 60's and 70's - was there a certain anti-war, anti-Nixon, anti-Republican tilt on campuses back then? Was there an anti-Reagan tilt in the 80's? Am I seriously asking this?

OK, put differently, did conservatives only become sinister and sly in the 70's? Why weren't corporations funding these right wing think tanks and right wing university programs in the 30's, or the 50's? Surely big business wanted to exploit the little guy back then.

August 21, 2003

If only she used her creative ellipsis on his recent post, she would produce Mr. Marshall informing us that:

...if the result of the invasion of Iraq is an Islamic theocracy, governed by Osama bin Laden, and purchasing nuclear weapons from Pakistan at bargain-basement prices, we'd... say... this was in fact... a positive development.

I see from Matthew Yglesias' site that there is a notion being peddled by certain conservative columnists that the bombing of the UN mission in Baghdad is actually a sign that the bad guys are on the ropes.

I went along with the idea that bombings in Bali, rather than Berlin, or Boise, were a sign of Al-Qaeda weakness. However, I concur that this latest spin on the Baghdad UN bombing is a bit much.

I'm probably getting certain particulars of this wrong, but there's a basic principle in scientific theory: an hypothesis, to be a real hypothesis, must be capable of disproof. In other words, for an hypothesis to be a valid basis for research, there must be some data which, if found to be true, would prove the hypothesis was false. Otherwise, there's no way to test it.

Now, foreign policy is no science. But some looser version of this principle must apply here as well. To be a policy, as opposed to a theological position, there must be some potential results that would show the policy was not working. The proponents of the policy should be able to say ahead of time that if this or that result happens, the policy has failed.

...So I think it's time for the hawks to give us a few examples of events that would show that our policy was not working or at least facing setbacks. You know, just so we can put down some benchmarks, so we can know what we're working with ...

Very reasonable. And for now, my response is to duck and cover. Eventually, we hope to dredge up some cryptic comments about building a better Iraq. Probably available here.

And we definitely want to avoid the rhetorical trap of accepting the notion that war advocates (Iraqi liberation advocates? Human rights advocates? National security advocates?) are monolithic in their views. Here we see that Dan Drezner is not stuck on "flypaper."

[Mini-update: Someone was kind enough to recommend this blog to me as one I should read more carefully. The author made the same point as Mr. Marshall, albeit at greater length, back on July 9.]

We also note his preceding post, which tells us that the Saudi jihadists entering Iraq are being pushed by a Saudi crackdown, as much as pulled by a burning, unquenchable desire to burn the flesh and break the bones of the hated Amercian infidels..., oh, whatever.

I have a strong feeling that this development will be spun as good news by the war advocates. (Hey, I am one!). Flypaper Plus! Which is hardly responsive to Mr. Marshall's request for clarity in goal setting.

A Big Idea: inspired by the now-defunct "Futures on Terror", someone should attempt to set up a "Futures on Software Terror".

The goal will be to create a market predicting the activity of computer viruses. Contracts predict the OS to be attacked, the software to be attacked, and other such techie info. Participants can be anyone - college kids, system administrators across the country, hackers who want to bet on their own success and score a big payday when their virus hits, engineers at Microsoft or Symantec who want to earn a bit on the side (OK, that could be troubling). Anonymous participation would encourage more evil-doers into the market, which would be a good thing (some caveats below).

If participation were broad, the prices would probably provide useful information about what might be targeted next. It also would provide (weird) incentives on both sides of the aisle - hackers could target longshot vulnerabilities in hopes of a big score; system defenders watching the price and volume of the various contracts might get useful clues as to where the next attack is coming from. And some talented amateurs might decide to profit by engaging in "good guy" hackery, if there is a way for them to bet against a successful attack and then thwart it, perhaps by tipping the right folks at Microsoft.

So, the prices in this market really could reflect tacit knowledge, and provide useful signals (and incentives) for future activity.

That's it - the futures on software terror! There are obvious problems:

- The underlying activity may be illegal, and not all participants will want to get involved.

- Contract specifications could be difficult - what is a successful virus triggering a payoff, and who judges?

- As noted, the prices will themselves encourage activity. Some of this is good, but if the new market increases the quantity and quality of "black hats" developing viruses and betting on their own success, then I think we will say this was a bad idea. Right now the payoff to unleashing viruses seems to be bragging rights (and PC capture for spamming!) - why add cash to the mix? Offsetting that, if the good guys have better info, and amteur good guys emerge, the trade-off might be worth it.

Prof. DeLong resurfaces the "futures on terror" question with a fascinating post, which we excerpt thusly:

I've been thinking about this argument by Daniel Davies for nearly two weeks now. I've concluded that it is either a brilliant innovative analysis, or utterly barking mad. Unfortunately, I don't know which:

Mr. Davies then presents a long argument which I am reluctant to excerpt or summarize for fear of dropping a key piece. That said, fools rush in:

...I do want to comment on the fact that a number of bloggers analysed it in terms of Hayek’s concept of tacit knowledge and markets as information-creating social entities.... I'm not inclined to take seriously those critiques based on bubbles or based on supposed inefficiencies of market behaviour, at least not unless they have some explanation of why these are particular flaws of market behaviour, rather than general organisational pathologies of groups of homo sapiens.

...I don't believe that Hayek’s discussion of "tacit knowledge" is relevant to the question of a Policy Analysis Market. The defining characteristics of Hayekian tacit knowledge is that it’s practical, non-propositional and local in time and space. I actually think it’s something approaching a category-mistake to suppose that anyone could be in a position to have tacit knowledge relevant to the question "Is the chance greater than 22% that the government of Saudi Arabia face a coup attempt this year?".

...Why does this matter? Well, it suggests that the prices struck in a market will be informative only if the market is well stocked with buyers and sellers operating on the basis of their own tacit knowledge.

...in order to be an efficient information-creating entity, a market has to have both hedgers or [sic - I think "and" belongs here] speculators. Although speculators are vital to the functioning of the market, you can’t have a market with nothing but speculators. And if you think about it, all the really successful "speculative" markets are ones in which the speculative activity clearly takes place in the context of a two-way market between hedgers. Commodities markets have structural demand from manufacturers and structural supply from primary producers. The stock market has structural demand (for stock) from people who want to save, and structural supply (of stock) from companies who want to raise money. The money market has structural demand from borrowers and structural supply from lenders.

There is nobody (to a reasonable first approximation) who has structural demand for more terrorism. The only people who have tacit knowledge of terrorists and would be considered to be on the long side of the market, are terrorists, who would presumably not be material participants.

If you hate that summary, blame me, and follow the links.

Now, first thought in rebuttal - what about sports betting? The folks with a natural long or short position would be players, managers, and owners. Other than a prospective "Pete Rose exception", these people are barred from betting. Hence almost all of the action is speculative. In fact, the price action does not, as best I know, actually guide any social activity - for example, higher coffee prices encourage production and substitution, and discourage use. What does a higher spread on the Giants game this weekend affect? I think the value is personal entertainment, and little else.

That said, I suspect that tests have been done to see whether betting lines are useful predictors of final outcomes. If they are, then it would suggest that a purely speculative market motivated by personal entertainment can still provide useful predictions.

However, how does one evaluate the accuracy of these predictions? I note that TradeSports has two propositions on the Kobe Bryant legal situation - will the case go to trial, and will a jury find him guilty.

I doubt that court insiders are driving the prices of either proposition. Currently, there are 247 contracts outstanding on the "guilty" question (and about a 35% probability that he will be found guilty, in which case, barring new evidence, I will be outraged). At $10 per contract, the total payout will be, IMHO, small (OK, I got out the calculator - $2,470).

So, the consensus of folks who read the papers and have both too much free time and too much free money is that there is a 35% probability that Mr. Bryant will be convicted. As interesting factoids go, I like it. As a quick quantification of the (cash based) conventional wisdom, I like it. However, how would one back test it, to see if this type of probability assessment is "accurate"? There are plenty of football games to backtest; this trial is, we hope, somewhat unique.

The best one could do is test similar predictions in similar situations, and see if any patterns emerge. Good luck finding useful data. Hmm, can I bet against such a study succeeding?

And how does this connect to the "Futures on Terror"? With "Coup in Saudi Arabia", we are going to have essentially one trial. If "the market" says there is a 20% probability of a coup by year-end 2003, we don't learn a lot come January 2004 whether there was a coup or not. If there is no coup, it may still have been the case that 20% was wildy optimistic, or pessimistic, as of August 2003 - we have very little against which to compare it.

The idea for PAM seems to be, markets work where there is lots of data and feedback, so they should work with very little data or feedback. Well, they might, but how would we know, either ex post or ex ante?

OK, sidebar, and the promised SoBig idea. First, as a PR ploy, if I were on Mr. Bryant's payroll (but not as a lawyer), I would drive down the prices on those two propositions, and whisper to my friends in the press that they should check this objective, market based measure to see how absurd folks really think these charges are. Is that hopelessly evil, cynical, and manipulative? No, I think I am serious - if I really believed in my client's innocence, why not punish the speculators betting against him? However, it might be interesting to see whose sense of ethics is offended by this notion of engaging in manipulation of an unregulated market of dubious legality and credibility, in order to help one's client.

Now, finally, the big idea. The theme is this - set up a futures market in computer viruses. Contracts predict the OS to be attacked, the software to be attacked, and other such techie info. Participants can be anyone - college kids, system administrators across the country, hackers who want to bet on their own success and score a big payday when their virus hits, engineers at Microsoft or Symantec who want to earn a bit on the side (OK, that could be troubling). Anonymous participation would encourage more evil-doers into the market, which would be a good thing.

Sorry, bait and switch - the big idea is continued in the post directly above. Think of it as my uncharacteristic attempt to unbury the lede.

August 20, 2003

So the question is, what group is nihilistic enough to see victory in the mass immiseration of fellow Arabs and the destruction of international support agencies?

While the B'aathists are contemptible, while in power they were always clever enough to play the United Nations off the U.S. and Great Britain. This attack has the feel of someone incapable of making such distinctions yet willing to hit soft targets. In other words, an Al Qaeda subsidiary. So, my money's on Ansar al-Islam.

Everyone has advice now for the U.S.: bring in U.N. peacekeepers, bring in the French. They're all wrong. There are only two things we need: more Americans out back and more Iraqis out front. President Bush needs to give the U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer III, more resources to get basic services here running and Iraqis in charge as fast as we can. This is not Germany 1945. America is much more radioactive in this region. We don't have infinite time.

Which is also why we need Iraqis out front — fast. They need to be seen to be solving their own problems. They need to be manning the checkpoints because only they know who the good guys and bad guys are, and they need to be increasingly running the show so attacks on Iraq's infrastructure are seen and understood as attacks on Iraqis, not on us.

And, most important, we need them out front because the Iraqi silent majority is our only potential friend in this whole neighborhood. Everyone else wants America to fail. But we have not empowered that Iraqi silent majority enough, and it has been too timid and divided to step forward yet.

...the best way to fight [the terrorists] is to ensure that they are rejected by the broader population. Terrorists and guerrillas rely on getting at least some popular support. America's task will be to restore public safety in Iraq and put in place effective governing institutions that are run by Iraqis. It would also help if we involved more troops from other countries, to make clear that the war wasn't an American plot to steal Iraq's oil and denigrate Islam, as the extremists argue.

The goal of creating a better Iraq is a noble one, but a first step will be making sure that ordinary Iraqis find America's ideals and assistance more appealing than Al Qaeda's.

UPDATE: Thanks very much to Doc. Drezner, who honors me with the company in which he puts me.

August 19, 2003

We are starting to worry a bit about the Earnest Professor's morale - with recent columns titled "Twilight Zone Economics" and "The Road To Ruin", it occurs to us that his brow may be furrowed over the arc of his professional reputation.

OK, that ends my moment of sensitivity (for 2003!). Today's theme is the recent blackout, and Prof. Krugman delivers a bold new view of how regulated and deregulated companies operate:

...energy experts have long warned that deregulation would lead to neglect of the grid. Under the old regulatory system, power companies had strong incentives to ensure the integrity of power transmission — they would catch the flak if something went wrong.

They would catch flak! Some of us may have thought that companies would review investment plans with the regulator, negotiate some fair return on investment, and upgrade their capacity as appropriate. The incentive was the opportunity to earn the regulated return on investment. Evidently not - it's all about the flak. But there is more:

But those incentives went away with deregulation: because effective competition in transmission wasn't possible, the companies providing transmission still had to be regulated. But because regulation limited their profits, they had little financial incentive to invest in maintaining and upgrading the system. And because of deregulation elsewhere, responsibility was diffused: nobody had a strong stake in keeping the system reliable. The result was a failure not just to add capacity, but to maintain and upgrade capacity that already existed.

In this new economic model, "responsibility was diffused" means "no one catches flak". The opportunity for profit, regulated or otherwise, no longer drives business decisions; rather, investment is targeted to minimize incoming flak.

In some outmoded alternative view, even regulated companies respond to profit opportunities. If more transmission capacity was needed, regulators would (one hopes) agree to an expansion of the rate base. Capacity would be added, prices would be adjusted, life would be good, and the (regulated) profits available to the transmission companies on their new capacity would be acceptable to all.

Now, I understand that this has not happened. However, I am not prepared to discard profit-oriented models in favor of "flak-catching" theories just yet.

The explanation may lie in the fact that the transition from one set of market rules to another can be perilous. If neither regulators nor the transmission companies can predict the future regulatory framework, an investment freeze may occur, regardless of the potential for flak.

Notes: Prof. Krugman quotes Paul Joskow of M.I.T, whose full comments are here. Despite the scare quote, Paul Jaskow's point was as Prof. Krugman described it: "These experts didn't necessarily oppose deregulation; their point was that deregulation could lead to disaster unless accompanied by policies not just to keep the grid reliable, but to expand it."

...It's a little puzzling to me why we aren't hearing more public outrage from retired CIA officers and from the larger world of people not in the government, or no longer in the government, with credentials to make a fuss about what seems to have been an illegal, politically-inspired act damaging to the national security.

I'm thinking about people like Sam Nunn, Warren Rudman, Stansfield Turner, Anthony Zinni, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and William Cohen. ...But there's also a semi-official CIA alumni group. So far, the only prominent folks who have spoken out have been those with partisan reasons for doing so. If that doesn't change, it's likely that Team Bush will be able to bury this scandal.

Emphasis added. Now, August is a difficult time to advance a story like this - Congressmen and staffers have fled for the recess, and Washington is on vacation.

However, another explanation for the ongoing indifference comes to mind, suggested by the silence of the big dogs - maybe what "seems to have been" a scandal really is not.

Mr. Kleiman, although critical of the right half of the blogosphere for ignoring this story, has not exactly trumpeted the questions we have raised about Ambassador Wilson's own credibility challenges. We also noted, with characteristic absence of brevity, that the Ambassador's initial account of his trip to Niger was incomplete - he told the CIA, but not the Times, that he had also picked up information that Saddam was attempting to purchase uranium.

Other than Ambassador Wilson's dramatic but carefully phrased "hypotheticals", we just don't know anything about his wife's status (Yes, I read Newsday, but under the statute, part of "covert" includes an overseas posting - the CIA doesn't do domestic), or whether her disclosure really harmed national security. The NY Times and several Senators have kicked this story around, but, as Mr. Kleiman notes, many others have not.

Is this lack of interest evidence of a successful stonewall? Well, it is consistent with that, yes. But it is also consistent with a similar theory about Oakland - there is no "there" there. It is possible that folks have quietly concluded that Ambassador Wilson is not someone to whom they want to hitch their wagon.

At this point, I am balancing four non-exclusive (and probably not exhaustive) possibilities: the stonewall, the slow news month, the "no 'there' there", and "the press protects sources, it does not arrest them".

The action, or lack thereof, when Congress comes back will be revealing. Current soundtrack for this story - See You In September.

This has got to be giving terrorists ideas as they watch from their caves. Osama may be plotting on his laptop right now, tapping into the cascading effect of an army of new terrorists signing up every time we kill or arrest a terrorist.

We join with Mr. Olsen in rejecting her suggestion that we should not arrest terrorists.

However, he slides past this weird bit of class warfare:

...unplugged Gothamites, busy using cigarette lighters to find their way out of subways, had no TV's on which to hear the tips. (Except the paranoid rich, who partied in Westchester with backup generators. Once, private jets were chic; now you must have private juice.)

Paranoid? Well, even paranoids have real blackouts, I suppose. And as evidence that not all preparation is paranoia I would offer the Boy Scout motto of "Be Prepared!", but they are anti-gay, so I suppose that won't do.

Nor does Mr. Olsen pounce on this absurdity:

But all Dick Cheney's secret meetings with unnamed energy officials were, sadly, not about saving us from this day. The White House has been too busy ensuring that Halliburton has no competitors for rebuilding Iraq to worry about rebuilding our own threadbare grid.

The following are some of the practical highlights of the National Energy Policy:

- Oil and natural gas: [ ]

- Coal: [ ]

- Nuclear power: [ ]

- Electric power plants: [ ]

- Infrastructure: New natural gas and electricity transmission lines would be encouraged by granting rights of way on federal lands and by new "legislation to grant rights-of-way for electricity transmission lines, with the goal of creating a national transmission grid." This would create federal power to acquire land for interstate commerce on a basis similar to current law for natural gas pipelines (pp. 7-7 and 7-8).

And why am I asking these silly rhetorical questions? Of course Ms. Dowd is utterly unaware of the contents of the Cheney energy plan, just as she is virtually conent-free on the politics of energy reform. She just knows it is a bad plan, made by bad, bad men. Men!

MORE: "One numbingly stupid ditz." Well, I wouldn't say it, but you don't hear me arguing, either. And surprise! I may have found a less reliable service than "Blogger", since these archive links aren't clicking. Look for, well, "numbingly stupid ditz" on Aug. 17.

The MaHa blog links to Ms. Dowd as a source for the anti-deregulation argument. Somewhat diminishes the credibility of what looks like a fine blog, although we applaud their sense of humor. The post is Aug. 17, and it looks like their time-stamps have me stumped, too.

BlogLeft also seems to take Ms. Dowd seriously on the "Cheney fiddled while the grid burned" meme. I am delighted to see Ms. Dowd has so many followers, and will be sure to put more effort into future trouncings of her.

Matthew Yglesias says Ms. Dowd is "definitely wrong" about tech failures, since the phones were working. Can we get Matthew up to "stone stupid"? Doubtful. But he does suspect a Jayson Blair scenario:

If Dowd had actually been, you know, in New York during the relevant period in time she would know that the still-working equipment was an odd mix of high- and low-tech.

End the mind control! The InstaMan excerpts my favorite bit. And the CalPundit has a problem with a "libido" metaphor employed by Mr. Friedman - he wonders about its veracity, and thinks Mr. Friedman may have sexed up his reporting.

But no one links to the new on-line newspaper started by local Iraqis!

Hassan Fattah is a young Iraqi-American journalist who has returned to Baghdad to start a terrific newspaper called Iraq Today (www.iraq-today.com).

C'mon, let's see how their servers are doing on a Sunday afternoon.

UPDATE: Depends on the meaning of "no one" - how about "none of them"? Sean LaFreniere unburies the lede; and the optimists at the Irish Eagle like Tom Friedman's spirit. But what is up with that slogan, "Life without Baseball"? Are they Mets fans?

August 16, 2003

Sports Saturday turns to statistics, with a NY Times piece titled "Statistics-Minded Executives Put a Lower Value on Bunting". The theme is that bunting as a tactic is overrated, and this is offered:

According to Baseball Prospectus, which analyzes statistics, teams with a runner on first base and no outs scored an average of 0.896 runs an inning last year. Teams with a runner on second and one out scored an average of 0.682 runs, meaning their chances of scoring decreased if they sacrificed the runner ahead.

But what is the variance? If it is the ninth inning of a tied game, I don't need to save an out and hope for a five run rally.

It may be the case that the scenario with a runner on second with one out averages .682 runs, but results in zero runs only 35% of the time. Maybe the "man on first, no out" scenario produces zero runs 40% of the time, but also produces more big innings. If this is the case, then bunting is the play.

Incredibly, considering the depths to which it has already been plumbed, we need more statistics. I know the Markov transition matrices are out there.

UPDATE: Last night, I saw a whole new reality about bunting when the Yanks battled the Orioles in extra innings.

With Nick Johnson on first and nobody out in the twelfth inning, Jeter fouled off a bunt attempt - strike one.

Then, Jeter failed to make contact on a hit and run - strike two, and Johnson is picked off in the ensuing run-down.

Finally, Jeter completes his exhibition of prowess by striking out.

However, with two outs and no one on, the O's pitch to Giambi, who crushes a home run. The announcers commented that, if the situation had been Johnson at second with one out, Giambi would have been walked to set up a double play.

So go figure.

BTW, The game-ending play will be on #1 on Sports Center: briefly, with two outs in the bottom of the twelfth, trailing by one run and a man on first, an Oriole doubles to right. The runner on first takes a big turn at third - is he going to try and score to tie the game? NO, he is going to hold up, skid, and fall down. Soriano (Yankee second baseman) throws to third to catch him coming back. A rundown ensues, and oh my goodness, no one is covering home plate!

However, our hapless Oriole decides this would be a good time to fall a second time, and does so, allowing himself to be tagged out just a few feet from home plate. Friends don't let friends drink and play major league ball.

Hideki Matsui's locker put him directly in the firing line at Camden Yards today.

Matsui's stall in the visitors' clubhouse is located under a television set that showed the Little League World Series. As the players from Japan were introduced, each one listed his favorite major leaguer. The Yankees howled as kids picked Ichiro Suzuki or Jason Giambi. Only three chose Matsui, who finally threw his hands up and walked away, an embarrassed smile on his face.

Those young players must not have seen the Yankees' game with the Orioles on Thursday. With a game-saving catch and two runs batted in, Matsui lifted the Yankees to an 8-5 victory.

In the search for the source of Thursday's blackout, the underlying cause has been all but ignored: deregulation. In principle, deregulation of the power industry was supposed to use the discipline of free markets to generate just the right amount of electricity at the right price. But electric power, it turns out, is not like ordinary commodities.

Electricity can't be stored in large quantities, and the system needs a lot of spare generating and transmission capacity for periods of peak demand like hot days in August. The power system also requires a great deal of planning and coordination, and it needs incentives for somebody to maintain and upgrade transmission lines.

Deregulation has failed on all these grounds. Yet it has few critics. Evidently, even calamities like the Enron scandal and now the most serious blackout in American history are not enough to shake faith in the theory.

Bill Richardson, Energy Secretary under Bill Clinton, and now Governor of New Mexico:

There are moves we need to make quickly to ease the crisis facing our electric transmission system. First, we must establish mandatory reliability rules....

Second, we need to outline basic rules of the road for utilities. For some time, the industry has been caught between the old paradigm of vertically integrated monopolies and the more modern approach of competitive wholesale markets. During this transition to competition, utilities have been reluctant to make investments in the transmission grid until they know what the rules will be and how they will benefit by them.

There is no doubt that a poorly handled deregulation can produce deplorable results. That does not in itself invalidate the theory.

Good point by Tyler Cowen - briefly, we have many layers of overlapping Federal, state, and local regulations. Deregulation may not work if we only cut part of the thicket, and we probably can't cut all of it.

August 15, 2003

Evidently, overexposure to stories about excessive heat can have a similar effect.

The French government has been criticized for its inept performance during a heat wave which may have claimed as many as 3,000 French lives. However, in a surprising turn to libertarianism, Atrios defends the French and announces that he does not see a role for Big Government in disaster prevention or relief.

The NY Times has a different, more predictable view of the French situation - of course the French government could have done more.

Let's see:

PARIS, Aug. 14 — While Europe's record heat wave has begun to moderate, the recriminations for what is only now being recognized as an epidemic of heat-related death are just beginning.

The withering heat of the last several weeks is being blamed for hundreds of deaths across Europe, and perhaps 3,000 deaths in France alone, according to Jean-François Mattei, the minister of health in France, where the bodies have been piling up quickly in the 100 degree-plus temperatures.

Emphasis added throughout. Is this the paper of record, or some irreverent blog, with this casual reference to the number of deaths? Continuing...

...Health experts said the stress of such heat, coupled with a general lack of air conditioning and insufficient public preparedness, was to blame for the high death toll.

...In the early days of this summer's heat wave, officials played down its significance, and most of the French government left for the annual monthlong August vacation. But as the death toll grew, the finger-pointing began.

...One factor common to the victims was a lack of air conditioning, which is less common in Europe than in the United States. But the problem was aggravated by the practice, at least in France, Italy and Spain, of shutting down parts of hospitals while doctors and staff take August vacations. The director of the big Saint-Louis Hospital, in Paris's 10th Arrondissement, Jean-Patrick Lajonchère, told the daily Le Monde that 35 percent of the hospital's capacity had been closed because of the summer break.

The city's medical system appeared overwhelmed. The Lariboisière Hospital, one of Paris's largest, reported about 220 admissions a day through the week. As part of an emergency plan, the government on Wednesday [August 13] began calling back hospital workers and government employees.

Earlier in the story, we were told that the heat wave began in mid-July, so this "response" came 3-4 weeks into it.

This being France, the heat also sparked a political emergency. As recently as Tuesday, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin was rejecting criticism of his handling of the heat-related deaths as "partisan polemics." But today he cut short his vacation to convene cabinet ministers who approved, among other measures, extending the Paris emergency plan in place to the entire country and opening military hospitals to those, particularly the elderly, suffering from the heat.

Even a libertarian like Atrios might admit that opening military hospitals is typically a government initiative.

...The Communist Party linked the crisis with government efforts to rein in health spending. The tiny Greens Party called for Mr. Raffarin's resignation.

Mr. Raffarin refused, telling reporters: "I will not resign," adding: "This is not the time for arguing. I feel that I have done all that was necessary at the right time."

Others disagree.

Now, with all respect to those who may think I am gloating, let's just say that the French government failed to identify a problem, and failed to respond effectively as the problem worsened. I at least have no doubt that more effective action could have saved lives.

And we love the CNN story, from August 12, when the French Government was still in denial:

Doctors have warned that many more people will die unless the government acknowledges there is a crisis.

The French Health Ministry responded to the criticism Monday, insisting there has been no massive increase in emergencies, even if more elderly people were being admitted to hospital.

The government said it was unclear if the heat was to blame.

"People don't come in with 'dying of heat' on their foreheads," The Associated Press quoted Stephane Grossier of the Health Ministry as saying. "Things are not as simple as they seem."

Avoid simplistic solutions.

Finally, a quick response to Jesse's strawman - if Bill Quick, Glenn, and I are criticizing anyone (I am!), it is the French government. So most of his tirade about (paraphrasing) "show me a lefty gloating specifically about soldiers dying, not folks pointing to casualties as evidence of this war's folly" is utterly misdirected. I am pointing to these deaths as evidence of the inability of the French Government to confront a problem, just as war critics point to casualties in Iraq to advance their agenda. I also reject the rest of the strawman, which seems to require Glenn to restrict his criticisms to well-known moderate lefties, since I think we are all free to criticize extremists. I believe that is part of the "anti-idiotarian" platform.

As an example of the sort of "gloating" the anti-war crowd produces, try this.

UPDATE: Jesse responds, identifying the concept of partisan blinders but missing the point as to who is wearing them. Switch the name here, and Jesse and I are in total agreement: Jesse is"a good guy, he's just entirely wrong on this one."

And, inspired by Jesse's helpful suggestion that "it's pretty goddamned solid that Glenn and Bill (and the latter's commenters) decided that the lessons to be learned from this heatwave is that they should have supported the war", we did check the Quick comments. I am missing the "support the war" rhetoric, but we do see the genesis of the "gloating" meme - apparently, if righties do not clearly decry the loss of innocent life, they are reveling in it. Thanks for the tip.

My suggestion - some creative lawyer-bloggers could draw up standard form disclaimers for both sides of the aisle. I will periodically link to the form denouncing racism, McCarthyism, and the loss of innocent life; folks on the left who are so inclined can link to a form denouncing Stalinism, communism, forced collectivism, and whatever else the folks who enjoy the labeling game come up with.

A quicker solution would be for folks to check their default settings, of course.

...According to several government sources familiar with leaks investigations, this is how it usually works: if the CIA learns of an authorized disclosure of classified information and wants to see the case pursued, it refers the allegation to the Justice Department. The DOJ then evaluates the legal issues and decides whether to have the FBI investigate. After Schumer made his formal request to Mueller, the FBI kicked the matter over to the CIA, according to a government source monitoring the case. Does the CIA want an investigation? Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the CIA, declined to comment. And what about the congressional intelligence committees? A Senate intelligence committee source says that committee members have made inquiries but that nothing major is likely to happen until the CIA informs the Justice Department that it suspects the law was broken.

The stonewall starts with the CIA. Corn thinks Tenet will stay loyal to Bush (not a bad guess), and that will be that, unless Congress can rally pressure for a special prosecutor.

And until we know for sure that Ms. Wilson was truly covert, and truly compromised, it will take a real Congressional hero to lay down on the tracks on this issue.

Prof. DeLong simply presents without comment the source for one of Prof. Krugman's assertions, and the detailed rebuttal by Phil Carter.

Mark Kleiman, a lefty who is a bit too independent a thinker to be a perfect contra-indicator, says this: "Phil Carter, who speaks from experience, demonstrates to my satisfaction that Krugman is, in this case, talking through his hat."

And, for those handicapping this, Phil Carter is a law student at UCLA who was formerly an officer in the US Army. Prof. Krugman has roughly my military background, which is to say, none. But I bet I have watched more Clint Eastwood flicks.

Mr. Carter disputes Prof. Krugman on a number of issues. The most vivid is the question of whether our troops are really operating in the desert with a mere 3 liters per day of water.

Mr. Carter explains that Prof. Krugman's source is referring to tastier, supplemental bottled water, and that the Army routinely plans for its water requirements. However, what Prof. Krugman originally wrote was:

Letters published in Stars and Stripes and e-mail published on the Web site of Col. David Hackworth (a decorated veteran and Pentagon critic) describe shortages of water. One writer reported that in his unit, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day," and that inadequate water rations were leading to "heat casualties."

We suppose there is a small possibility that Phil Carter is wrong, that the Army has never thought of its water situation before, and that they really are providing their troops with a mere 3 liters per day.

And, if we follow the charts, it appears that desert conditions call for roughly one quart per hour. As the main article makes clear, officers are strictly admonished to pay attention to the condition of their troops. But maybe all of this is being ignored in Iraq, or perhaps in Princeton. We are sure that Prof. Krugman, having done his homework, is aware of these guidelines, just as we are suprised that his editors missed this.

Phil Carter seems like a chap who would be magnanimous in victory. The only remaining question providing a bit of suspense is whether Prof. Krugman will be gracious in defeat.

Bold Predictions: (1) Prof. Krugman's next few columns will focus on economics, with an emphasis on statistics rather than polemics; (2) we will see at his website a standard form "divide and conquer climbdown" - "some of my critics are deranged, and here is an example of the criticism I get; however, others have raised valid points"; and (3) as with falling off a bicycle, the Earnest Prof will return, one day, to military topics. And he will have done his homework.

As America nears the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, families and friends of those who died that day are hoping to transform the date of the terrorist hijackings into a national day of volunteer service and charity.

At a news conference Tuesday, One Day's Pay, the group spearheading the effort, said its purpose was simple: to encourage individuals and organizations to set aside time on Sept. 11 to help others in any way they choose.

"Sept. 11 is a date that has been seared in our memories," said Alice Hoglan, a One Day's Pay board member whose son, Mark Bingham, died on hijacked United Flight 93. She said a day of volunteerism would be "a vehicle to convert that negative, awful energy that was created that day into something beautiful, optimistic and uplifting."

I love the design and the writing is first-class. It has a bit more personal info than we are accustomed to around here, however - although it is of limited interest to me, given my situation, the author informs us that, at least at one time, she was at home in the sack. Somewhat unexpectedly, this only ranks at number (5) in interesting tidbits, although it also serves as another data point to complement Ms. Galt (who, I must add, we are always delighted to compliment).

Anyway, my first impression is that it's a great blog. And we know the importance of first impressions.